Book review: Kitty Hawk and the Hunt for Hemingway’s Ghost (Kitty Hawk Flying Detective Agency Series Book 2) by Iain Reading

Title and author: Kitty Hawk and The Hunt for Hemingway’s Ghost by Iain Reading

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Date published: September 11th, 2013

Pages: 246

Genre: Mystery / thriller / women sleuths / YA fiction

Book Description:

Kitty Hawk and the Hunt for Hemingway’s Ghost is the exciting second installment in a new series of adventure mystery stories that are one part travel, one part history and five parts adventure. This second book in the series continues the adventures of Kitty Hawk, an intrepid teenage pilot who has decided to follow in the footsteps of her hero Amelia Earhart and make an epic flight around the entire world. After flying across North America Kitty’s journey takes her down south to Florida where she plans to get a bit of rest and relaxation before continuing on with the rest of her long and grueling flight.

As Kitty explores the strange and magical water world of the Florida Keys her knack for getting herself into precarious situations sweeps her headlong into the adventure of a lifetime involving mysterious lights, ancient shipwrecks, razor-toothed barracudas and even a sighting of the great Ernest Hemingway himself. This exhilarating story will have armchair explorers and amateur detectives alike anxiously following every twist and turn as they are swept across the landscape and history of the Florida Keys all the way from Key West to the strange and remarkable world of Fort Jefferson and the Dry Tortugas.

About the Author: I Like Root Beer. When I was younger I fancied myself a bit of a Root Beer connoisseur, drinking my favourite brand (A&W, of course) from tall, narrow champagne flûtes and revelled in the sound of the ice cubes clinking against the side of the thin glass, creating a magical tinkling ambiance as I looked down my nose at all the other inferior Root Beer vintages. As I grew older and began to travel all across the globe I was naturally inclined to seek out the very best Root Beers that the world had to offer. Sadly, as I was to discover, Root Beer is very much a North-American thing and you can’t really find it anywhere else in the world. On the bright side, however, it turns out that the world is a pretty great place even without Root Beer. There are a million amazing things to see and as many more ways for all of us to see them, as our heroine and friend Kitty Hawk finds out in the course of her various adventures.

Kitty is at it again with another nail-biting adventure in the Florida Keys. Before she begins her around the world trip, she wants to take a bit of a vacation with her parents. After exploring the Keys, she decides to go camping at Fort Jefferson to “really get away from it all”. But we know Kitty, her insatiable curiosity really gets the best of her when she suddenly sees an eerie green light in the shallow water close to the fort. Unfortunately, she can’t resist taking a closer look.

I was curious to see how the author was going to prepare us for Kitty’s around-the-world trip. I was a little worried that Kitty wasn’t ready for this enormous undertaking and was relieved to see all the precautions and preparation that Kitty and her family put into place before her trip. The mini GPS maps really help to locate where she is on her flight path. I googled a lot of the information I read in the book just to be sure she would be alright. Her plane is a lot bigger than I thought and the extra fuel tanks will help her on her long haul flights. I learned so much about geography, aviation, travel and literature as I read this book (and if you are interested to learn more, there is a mini encyclopedia at the end).

Kitty’s sense of adventure is contagious and I will be following her as she heads off to Iceland in her next book. Where’s my backpack?